the word DSP is a bit confusing in this context, I know. blackfins/sharc & friends are often referred to as "DSP"s, in that context it simply means a "CPU with some DSP capabilities, like MAC, maybe some imaging/audio specific encoders/decoders etc"

I still have trouble seeing the future of SHARC/blackfin. It seems sales are mostly tied to existing customer investments, tools, software stack, integration with other chips from same manufacturer, etc.

but it's important what is easy to change, and what is hard to change. people have limited time. It may be far easier to change something towards a look you like by playing with a powerful VJ software running on a Mac, for example.

I think the point I tried to make was, you have found a potential buyer in me by keeping milkymist open source, if it would've been closed source it (the product) would be completely uninteresting to me

cons: availability can be very spotty (when the next chip comes out dev boards of older chips go away), pcba only (no case), often with a lot of bugs in specific parts that will never be fixed because the next devboard will be done from scratch to highlight the next chip's features

for the most part, dev boards are ugly quick hacks to get people to jumpstart new designs with the latest and greatest chip. focus is on exposing the new high-end features that the manufacturer believes will create demand for the new chip.

(washing machine) sure, but that's still a bit different. You could probably buy a ready device that blinks leds on your desktop when mail arrives, but people wants to build it themselfs, without actually putting any effort into building it